II. To the Principal Arguments

286. To the principal arguments [nn.256-261]:

To the first [n.256] I concede that the soul is of itself actually intelligible and present to itself, and from this follows that it could understand itself if it were not impeded; for nothing is lacking to first act, neither on the part of one cause or both, nor on the part of their union; and thus the whole of first act is perfect of itself, and on this first act should follow the second act that is intellection. For this reason, perhaps, Augustine frequently says that the soul ‘always knows itself’, because of this proximity to the act of knowing when there is no imperfection in first act.

287. Now the soul does not in this way always know a stone, because although it always has the perfect act of knowing a stone with respect to its own proper partial causality, yet it does not always have the other partial cause in act and present to it in act; and therefore the soul can be said to be ‘sometimes in essential potency’ to understanding a stone, namely when it lacks the form that is of a nature to be the other partial cause in act and of a nature to be united to it in act. And in this way does Augustine posit a trinity [On the Trinity 14.6 n.9, 7 n.10] and yet posits that it pertains to the memory alone, because the whole thing exists under the idea of being intelligible only in the presence of the object (and this pertains to the memory [1 d.2 nn.221, 291, 310, d.3 n.580]), but in it is the virtual intellection of the object, which intellection pertains to the intelligence; and in this way, when the will is present as first act, the first act is in some way, in the sufficient cause as in the will and in the sine qua non condition as in the intellection, perfected for having a second act with respect to itself as effect. But because nothing of this whole save what pertains to the memory is in act, therefore this whole trinity (namely, that which is of a nature to be a trinity) is in the memory alone as to its real actuality.

288. But why does this total first act not proceed to second act [n.286], since it is per se a sufficient principle for eliciting the second act? I reply: because there is an impediment which this cause cannot overcome, in just the way that a natural cause, however much it be posited to be perfect, could yet never act because of some impediment overcoming it.

289. But what is this impediment? I reply: our intellect, for this present state, is not of a nature immediately to move or be moved unless it is first moved by something imaginable or sensible from outside.

290. And why is this? Perhaps because of sin, as Augustine seems to say On the Trinity 15.27 [cf. 1 d.13 n.78], “Infirmity does this to you, and what is cause of infirmity but sin?” (The same is said by the commentator on Ethics 6 and by Lincoln on the same place and on Posterior Analytics likewise.)Eustratius Nicomachean Ethics 6.4 f.106rb-va, as translated and annotated by Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, ibid., and on Posterior Analytics 1.14 f.14ra. ⁶⁹ Or perhaps this cause is natural, in that in this way was nature set up (as not absolutely natural), namely, if the order of powers (which was discussed largely in 1 d.3 nm.187, 392) necessarily required this, that a phantasm must, as regard whatever universal the intellect may understand, make actually appear a singular of the same universal; but this does not come from nature (nor is this cause absolutely natural), but from sin - and not only from sin but from the nature of the powers in this present state, whatever Augustine may be saying.

291. To the form, then, of the argument [n.256] I say that the cause that is on the part of the angel [sc. ‘because his essence is intelligible and present to the intellect itself’, n.256] is sufficient for the essence of the angel to be the sufficient reason for understanding itself; the essence is also such on the part of the soul, but in the soul it is impeded, and in the angel not impeded; for the intellect of an angel does not have the sort of order to imaginables that our intellect has in this present state.

292. And because of this impotency for immediately understanding intelligibles in act (which impotency does not come from an intrinsic but an extrinsic impossibility, which impossibility, and not just any impossibility, the Philosopher also experienced), the Philosopher himself said that ‘the intellect is not any of the intelligibles before it understands’ [n.256], that is, ‘it is not able to be understood by itself before the understanding of other things’; and this last proposition is multiple, according to composition and division (like the proposition in Topics 6.6.145b21-30, ‘this now is first immortal or incorruptible’), from the fact that the preposition ‘before’ along with its clause ‘the understanding of other things’ (which is equivalent to an adverbial determination) can be composed with the infinitive ‘to be understood’ signifying the term of the power (and the sense is that of composition) or with the composition itself signified by the indicative term of verb ‘is’ (and the sense is that of division); so that the first sense [sc. of composition] is this: ‘it is not possible for the intellect to be understood by itself before the understanding of other things’, and this sense is true according to the Philosopher; but the other sense [sc. of division] is that ‘before the understanding of other intelligibles it is not possible for the intellect to understand’, and it is false (just as the proposition ‘this is now first immortal’ is false about man in the state of innocence, Topics 6 above). And in this way does the Philosopher understand that ‘the soul understands itself as it does other things’ [n.256].In the Topics passage Aristotle discusses the sentence ‘this animal is incorruptible now’ and says it can be understood to mean ‘this animal is not corrupted now’ or ‘it is not possible for it to be corrupted now’, or ‘it is of the sort now as never to be corrupted’. He further remarks that when we say an animal is incorruptible now we do not mean that now the animal is such (sc. such as never to be corrupted) but that now it is as never corrupted (sc. though it can or will be corrupted sometime later, as was also true of man in the state of innocence before the fall, that he was immortal then but not such that, through sin, he could not die later). Hence the ‘now’ is either taken in divided sense where it is outside and governs ‘this animal is incorruptible’, so that the sense is that the animal is such as never to die, and this sense is false; or in composed sense where the ‘now’ is part of ‘this animal is incorruptible’, so that the sense is that the animal is at this time now incorruptible (though nothing is implied about whether it can or cannot be corrupted later), and this sense is true. So the sentence discussed here by Scotus, ‘the intellect is not able to be understood by itself before the understanding of other things’, can be taken either in divided sense where the ‘not possible before it understands other things’ is outside and governs ‘the intellect understands itself’, so that the sense is that the combination of ‘the intellect understands itself’ and ‘before it understands other things’ is impossible, or that the intellect is such as never to understand itself before understanding other things. This sense is false. Or the sentence can be taken in composed sense where the ‘not possible before it understands other things’ is part of ‘the intellect understands itself’, so that the combination of ‘the intellect understands itself’ and ‘before it understands other things’ is not impossible simply but only given the intellect’s current ability. This sense is true because it allows that the intellect might, in other conditions, be able to understand itself before it understands other things. So, finally, when the Philosopher says ‘the soul understands itself as it understands other things’, he should not be taken as meaning that it is impossible simply for the soul to understand itself in any other way, but that this way is how it does in fact understand itself - without implication about what it may or may not be able to do in other circumstances. ⁷⁰

293. And, according to this mode of exposition, the intellect is moved by imaginable objects and, when these are known, it can know from them ideas common to immaterial and to material things and thus, by reflection, know itself under an idea common to itself and to imaginable things. But it cannot understand itself immediately without understanding something else [n.256], for it cannot be moved immediately by itself because of its necessary ordering, in this present state, to imaginable things [1 d.3 nn.541-542].

294. As to the second principal argument [n.257], one doctor says [Aquinas ST Ia q.56 a.1 ad2] that a singular can be per se understood although not a material singular, because it is not the singularity but the materiality that gets in the way (otherwise God would not be intelligible since he is singular, which is false); and then the response is plain, that the assumed proposition about the non-understood singular [‘a singular is not per se intelligible’, n.257] is only true of a material singular. Another doctor says [Henry of Ghent Quodlibet 5 q.15] that the intellect is not able to understand either itself or other things under the idea of a singular (material or immaterial) but under the idea of a universal, which is per se the object of the intellect and also shines forth in the intelligible habit; and according to this opinion too the response to the argument is plain. However I believe neither is true save when speaking of the material intellect, which is not able perhaps, because of its imperfection, to understand every intelligible that an angelic intellect can understand.

295. To the third [n.258] I say that the reason for the major proposition [sc. ‘every cognitive power must, as to itself, be bare of that which is the reason for knowing’] is this - first in the case of the sensitive powers - ‘that every sensitive power requires a determinate organ’; hence from the possible determinate number of organs the Philosopher concludes, On the Soul 2.6.418a7-17, 3.1.424b22-27, 3.2.426b8-12, to a determinate number of actions or objects. But the organ has to be so disposed that it can receive the sensible thing without matter, and, in the case of bodily things, whatever is receptive of the form without the matter is not commonly receptive of every form (I said ‘commonly’ for this reason, that the discussion is not now of the organ of sense, about which there is a special difficulty [Reportatio ad loc.]). So the organ of sense must be not such, that is, it must lack the object in the object’s material and sensible being (not only actually but even potentially), because it is not receptive of the object in its material being (according to which being it is the object of sense). The point is very clear about color, where the thing that receives it in material being is the surface of a determinate body, but where the thing that receives it without matter is a transparent or indeterminate body [sc. the water or air etc. through which a colored object is seen]. And thus opposed dispositions are required in the organ of sense, because it must be receptive of the sensible without matter and in something which must receive the object in material being [sc. the eye, qua seeing, is transparent but qua determinate body has a colored surface]; so for this reason the organ, and consequently the sense that is in the organ, has to be bare of the form that it receives.

296. From this too follows what is put forward by the Philosopher in On the Soul 3.4.429a24-27, namely that the intellect is not the power of an organ and so is separated from the whole of matter, just as from any organ by which it operates. For if it required some organ, that organ would be of a determinate disposition (as is every bodily organ), and so from the fact it is receptive of things according to determinate material being (because of the determinate disposition of the body) it would not be receptive of all bodily forms according to immaterial being; and so the intellect could not receive the forms of all material things, as of its objects, if it were a material and organic power. However, when one has that it is a non-organic power, there is no need for it to be really not of the sort as that is of which it has to be intellectually receptive; for there is no need that there be an opposite disposition in what is receptive really and intellectually of something - on the supposition that the intellect is not an organic power, although this would be required if it were an organic power; for the same intellect can be itself really and be habitually in act really, and yet receptive intellectually both of itself and of its habit and of anything that really informs it; and the whole reason is that such things, when intellectually received, do not require in the receiver a determinate disposition opposite to intelligible real being [1 d.3 nn.383-390].

297. The proposition, then, which says that the knower must be not such, or bare of that which it knows or receives and of the reason for knowing [n.258], entails, if it is taken generally, that every intellect is nothing, because every intellect in itself belongs to the totality of beings, and so it will be none of the beings; and this understanding is false. But it is however not material or organic, so that it can be capable of all beings; because if it were material or organic it would be receptive only of some things without matter, things the reception of which would not be repugnant to its material entity; but to its intellectual entity the intellectual reception of anything whatever is not repugnant.

298. To the fourth principal argument [n.260] the reply has been made frequently [1 d.3 nn.430, 513-520] that the same thing can move itself (not only with bodily but also with spiritual motion), and universally any virtual univocal action can stand with a power for a second formal act; and, next, it has been frequently said [2 d.2 nn.472-473, 1 d.2 n.231, 1 d.7 n.72] how the same thing is not in power and in act as these are opposite differences of being, whether per se or denominatively, and yet the same thing is in potency (that is, is a passive principle) and in act (that is, is an active principle of the same).

299. As to the final argument [n.261], although some [Averroes, Metaphysics 12 com.51] concede the conclusion there drawn [sc. ‘the intellection would be the same either as the object or as his essence’] - which seems impossible, because then it would follow that the intellection would be actually infinite (for any intellect can be of infinite intelligibles, and if it then had an intellection the same as itself, the intellection of anything whatever would, by parity of reason, be the same as itself, and thus it would have an intellection the same as itself which was or could be of infinite intelligibles) -however I deny the consequence [sc. ‘if an angel could.. .then.. .the object or as his essence’].

300. And as to the proof of the consequence [n.261] I say that the intellection, according to truth, is an extreme both with respect to the power and with respect to the object, because it is the effect of both; for just as when knowledge is produced by diverse things (knower and known) there is an effect common to them both (Augustine On the

Trinity IX.12 n.18), so too when an effect is produced by something the same that has the nature of both the power and the object, it is the effect of that one thing (which thing really has the double causality) and is not in between the same thing and itself in natural reality, the way that a middle is in between contraries; and about such a middle, as far as concerns the nature of the thing, the proposition is true that ‘the middle agrees more with the extremes than the extremes agree with themselves’ [n.261].

301. To the confirmation [n.261] I say that an intellection is distinguished from another intellection by the object, but it is distinguished from the object and the power by itself formally; but the fact it is distinguished from them causally it gets from the extrinsic causes (as from the power and the object), as the ray has causally from the sun that it is distinguished from it.